Interesting Links for 16-08-2022

[andrewducker]

1. Under Marxism, which will be the correct way to eat?

(tags:food cooking communism funny restaurant )

2. New Omicron jab to be rolled out within weeks after UK becomes first country to approve it

(tags:UK Pandemic vaccine )

3. On The Society Of Authors and transphobia

(tags:LGBT authors UK transgender )

4. Estonian government will remove Soviet Union war monuments

(tags:Russia war statue Estonia )

5. Home solar panels will now pay for themselves in just four years as energy bills soar

(tags:solarpower electricity money )

6. The majority of babies born in the UK have unmarried parents

(tags:marriage babies uk )

7. Saving Lake Windermere

(tags:UK water Doom )

Comments

[danieldwilliam]

Probably true over the next 20 years.

[andrewducker]

How much oversupply and storage do we need on top of generation to guarantee absolutely no blackouts? I know we can do it, but my memory was that guaranteeing it was remarkably expensive. Although storage may have gotten significantly cheaper than then.

[danieldwilliam]

Nobody guarantees absolutely no blackouts but taking your point as an acceptable level of blackout risk I think a lot of the prohibitive cost comes if you are determined to minimise generation capacity and the dumping of surplus generation.

I think the key commercial break-through is someone finding something that uses a lot of electricity to do something useful and which doesn't mind much being switched on and off somewhat unpredictably.

[andrewducker]

Although clearly some people think it's doable much cheaper than I thought
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180208141214.htm

[andrewducker]

Ooh - this is quite a good one

https://www.reddie.co.uk/2022/08/03/renewable-energy-oversupply-and-storage/

[danieldwilliam]

That links to this

https://www.ldescouncil.com/assets/pdf/LDES-brochure-F3-HighRes.pdf

which is chock full of interesting chat on alternative technologies for longer-duration storage including some heartening numbers on the projected pipeline.

[andrewducker]

Oh yes. If someone like these people can get it off the ground then that'll make a massive difference on that front:
https://prometheusfuels.com/news/dude-wheres-my-fuel

We just oversupply greatly and store fuel for the down periods.

[danieldwilliam]

I'm quite excited about those people - I look forward to seeing them go live with some production this time next year.

[andrewducker]

As a somewhat aside, I always find gravity storage numbers a bit silly.

The figures on page 11 have it as 20-1000MW for up to 15 hours. That's 300-15,000 MWH. 10,000MWH is a nice middle ground.

To lift 1 ton 1m takes 9,800 joules. Which is about 2.7WH. Not very much. Your phone battery could list about 6 tons by 1m.

10GWH would take 3.7 million tons up 100m. That's 10 Empire State Buildings, lifted a quarter of their own height. Managing all of that seems like a titanic task. I can certainly understand why water is so much easier to manage.

[danieldwilliam]

On reflection I don't see gravity storage being much use when pumped hydro exists. I was enthused for a bit a few years ago but it just doesn't work as well as PHES for some applications and batteries for other.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, gravity storage sounds awesome when you think "Big block of concrete = big amount of energy!" When you discover that 50 tons of concrete 20m in the air is enough to boil 3 liters of water, it makes the scale of the problem rather more apparent.